marzipan strawberries-miniature

Miniature Marzipan Strawberries

I wasn’t able to pick strawberries this summer…which really bums me out.  I always pick them.  My birthday falls around strawberry picking season and I have alway’s loved that about my birthday. So…since I wasn’t able to pick them, I decided  to make this fun mini pint of strawberries from marzipan.

I found this cute silicone mold at Michael’s.  It’s made by Martha Stewart and was intended to use with polymer clay, however, the nice thing about flexible silicone molds is that you can use them for a myriad of projects using many mediums such as chocolate, paper pulp, gumpaste, marzipan or fondant.  If you have never used a silicone mold, go purchase some and give them a try.  They are really fun to use and easy to clean up!

I made my modeling medium by using fondarific cherry red fondant ( cherry flavored) and Odense modeling marzipan . I tinted the marzipan red with paste food coloring and added 1/3 of the fondarific to the marzipan to keep it softer and make it easier to wok with. I also added a bit of strawberry flavoring.  Sometimes straight marzipan can get a little greasy after adding coloring and kneading it.

I didn’t use the whole mold to make each berry.  I used the mold to add texture to the berry.  The size was too big in comparison to the berry crates that I made.  

After rolling them into strawberry shapes, I pressed them lightly into the molds to give them the seeded texture.

Purchase some green non-tempering chocolate wafers form a grocery store of candy supply store ( A.C. Moore and Michaels’ has them as well in the cake decorating department). Melt them in the top of a double boiler on low heat, stirring constantly. Spoon the melted chocolate into a small pastry bag fitted with a coupler and small leaf tip.  pipe the leaves on top of each berry.  I used an empty egg carton tirned upside down to hold each berry upright while I piped the tops on.  Let the chocolate harden, and then set aside.

To make the berry crate, I deconstructed a real green corrugated berry crate from the fruit stand by cutting down each corner to the bottom of the crate, and then scanning the image at 60% ( try different percentages until you get the size right for you). I copied each side of the berry crate onto both plain paper and light weight card stock.  I glued the back and front together so that both sides of the crate were green. After I scanned them I scanned a third image to use as extra paper to make tabs on each crates quarter angle, and glued the tabs on using a glue stick. Afterwards, I cut out the white areas at the bottom using a sharp Exacto knife. You can skip this step if you’d like, but I wanted to see the berries through the crate like a real one.

Fold the sides up and the tabs in and glue the tabs onto the inside of the crate walls on each side.  Leave to dry.

I made two different sizes of berry crates.

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